In a disturbing development, a Russian lawmaker responsible for writing
the St. Petersburg version of the new nationwide law that bans anything perceived as pro-gay in that country, said yesterday
that the Russian government had no right to promise the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) that the law would not be enforced against
Olympic athletes and guests.

Ugh!

Although, IF that happens the world of shit that would come down on Russia would be mighty impressive and highlight just how horrible it is for gays and lesbians in that country right now. You assholes leave Johnny Weir alone!

Now this is certainly a progressive way for a "progressive" campaign to behave.

Now, Team Weiner is firing back. TPM called Weiner’s communications
director Barbara Morgan to discuss an unrelated story Tuesday and she
went off on a curse-filled rant about Nuzzi, describing her as a fame
hungry “bitch” who “sucked” at her job. Morgan also called Nuzzi a
“slutbag,” “twat,” and “cunt” while threatening to sue her.

The House Natural Resources Committee will likely approve legislation Wednesday that would name 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean and thousands of miles of coastline after the late President Ronald Reagan.
Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) legislation would rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

Who better to name that after? Other than pretty much everyone.

But hey, look at those Republicans in Congress...passing "important" legislation.

Hey it's almost time for the August break for Congress...that traditionally busy time that is followed by ignoring imminent threats or lunatic-dominated "town meetings".
But leave it to the Perry Como of the House and his minions to set a new tone:

Congressional lawmakers will straggle into the Capitol this week for the last legislative days before their long summer recess, crunch time in past Congresses but a sleepy time for the underachieving 113th.
The last week before the August recess is usually full of late nights, last-minute deal-making and achievements to take home to constituents. This week, the House will not even show up until Tuesday evening.

...the House’s marquee moment before adjourning until Sept. 9 will come on Friday with its 40th vote to cripple President Obama’s health care law. House members preparing their vacation plans have been assured that the last vote will be no later than 3 p.m.

In an interview on Fox News Saturday, Rep Steve King (R-IA) said many of his colleagues in Congress are "standing by" him after he claimed many immigrants brought to the U.S. as children are drug smugglers.
"My colleagues are standing by me. They come up to me constantly," King said.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Law enforcement in Baton Rouge have reportedly been using an invalid,
unconstitutional law to target and arrest adult gay men, according to a
new report.

The Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office sting was revealed on Saturday by the Baton Rouge Advocate, which investigated the arrests of at least a dozen Louisiana gay men since 2011
who agreed to consensual gay sex with undercover officers. In all of
the cases, the men were arrested under the state's anti-sodomy law,
which was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court’s
2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

Technically invalid yet still on the books

The last line is a good summary of a lot of the South's politics.

...and yes, I know there are a lot of very good people in the South...but clearly not enough.

The obvious, but not often discussed canard (one of many) in Wayne LaPierre's logic (sociopathy):

A gunman holding hostages inside a South Florida apartment complex
killed six people before being shot to death by a SWAT team that stormed
the building early Saturday following an hours-long standoff, police
said.

Sgt. Eddie Rodriguez told The Associated Press that police
got a call around 6:30 p.m. Friday that shots had been fired in a
building with dozens of apartments in Hialeah, just a few miles north of
Miami.

Rodriguez said that when police arrived, they discovered an active
shooter situation: “He’s inside the building, moving from floor to
floor. Eventually he barricades himself in an apartment.”

A crisis team was able to briefly establish communication with the
man. Rodriguez said negotiators and a SWAT team tried talking with him
from the other side of the door of an apartment unit where he was
holding two hostages.

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

In an interview on Fox News Saturday, Rep Steve King (R-IA) said many of his colleagues in Congress are "standing by" him after he claimed many immigrants brought to the U.S. as children are drug smugglers.

"My colleagues are standing by me. They come up to me constantly," King said.

King implied his colleagues were expressing their support "privately."

Sources tell Gawker that during the discovery process, emails were
unearthed suggesting that Brooks had, at various times, had sex with
Coulson, her boss Rupert Murdoch, and Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son and the likely successor to his empire. A new twist on honor thy father.

According to an intriguing but frustratingly vague report in the Daily Mail,
UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his office at No. 10 Downing Street
are in the midst of dealing with a sex scandal described by the Mail's
sources as “stunn[ing],” “dynamite,” “a complete mess” and “of great
personal distress to innocent parties.” But what's the scandal, and who
exactly does it involve? No one who knows is saying, at least not
publicly.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

House Republicans plan a 40th attempt at repealing Obamacare next week,
with legislation that would block the Internal Revenue Service from
enforcing or implementing any portion of the health care reform law.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the guy who said DREAMers are mainly are drug smugglers, went on the House floor today to defend his comments, actually repeat his comments. We watched it live. And a few times I walked by the folks watching it and “So, what’s he saying exactly?” And these pretty smart folks who produce each day basically said, “We’re really not sure” and understandably so since King went on to talk about Moses and the Greeks and the Founding Fathers and various other people to explain why DREAMers are drug mules.
Frankly, it’s weird. And King doesn’t seem to realize that Socrates didn’t know about Moses or seemingly much about the pervasive ancient Greek practice of pederasty. He also seems to think Rome conquered Ireland. Anyway.

And now, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) wants to take that dignity away from Mr. Arthur. The day after a judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring Ohio to list Arthur’s husband as his “surviving spouse” on his death certificate, DeWine announced that he would appeal this decision and try to strip a dying man of his final wish.

DeWine of course wants to kiss fundamentalist ass.
Because denying a dying man a simple wish is TOTALLY what Jesus would do apparently.

A growing group of congressional Republicans is pushing leaders to
defund ObamaCare in the next government spending bill, setting the stage
for a showdown in September, when the current continuing resolution
expires.

So no then.

I'm sure the "Master Negotiator" in the White House has another cunning plan centered around chained-CPI though.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

By continuing to unsheathe his sword and adopting pseudonyms like "Carlos Danger" Anthony Weiner has taken politics beyond the realm of typical jerks like Steve King or San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, or even Larry Craig. No he has entered the world of Sarah Palin-level performance art.

Earlier I wrote that Steve King is the most inveterate racist in Congress...it's probably a tie.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) compared the civil rights of African Americans
and other minorities to the rights of animals during a House Judiciary
Committee hearing on Wednesday, sparking outrage from lawmakers.

King drew significant attention Tuesday for
remarks he made to Newsmax about Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants
who entered the U.S. as children. The ardent opponent of comprehensive
immigration reform said many Dreamers "weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got
calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of
marijuana across the desert."

Walter Henry Butler, 59, was arrested by Gulf County Sheriffs deputies after shooting Everett Gant, who is black. Gant was shot in the face after he confronted Butler about using racial slurs to address children living in the apartment complex where the two men reside.

Deputies said Butler admitted to shooting the victim, and even called 911 himself to report it, after which he reportedly went back to cooking his dinner. According to reports, officers on the scene said Butler seemed annoyed by the arrest and told officers, “I only shot a ni—r.

Florida, I already know that many of you don't feel shame, I just hope most of you are at least not too proud right now.

By the way, Mr. Gant is expected to live, thankfully -- to this point Mr. Butler has not claimed he was standing his ground.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The report documents 75 CIA drone strikes and five NATO attacks
conducted between 2006 and 2009, and reveals that 746 people—and not the
“50 to 60” that the US continues to claimed—were killed in the attacks.
At least 147 of the victims were non-combatants and 94 were children,
according to the Bureau.

The United States has firmly held onto the claim that only a small number of non-combatants have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan “despite research by the Bureau and others suggesting that over 400 civilians may have died in the nine-year campaign.”

And in 20 years of so, in the wake of some massive strike against Americans someone will ask "Why do they hate us?" once again...and promptly not receive an answer.

One does wonder if there's some sort of 'macro' that a columnist hits on their keyboard to add some sort of smarmy false equivalency to any article.

In a recent New Yorker columnist on the legislative nihilism of the modern GOP Congress, Jonathan Chait throws out this beauty:

The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress.

Um...yeah.

The radical left...oh how they would have stopped all that civil rights legislation and medicare -- such obstructionists...hypothetically of course...even if they would have supported all those things.

What, pray tell, would the "radical left" of the 1960s have done exactly that would have stopped the government from functioning? Stopped Vietman?

Monday, July 22, 2013

A pro-gun group from Ohio launched a fundraising effort over the weekend to buy George Zimmerman a new gun.

On the heels of reports that the Justice Department is placing a hold
on all evidence in the case, including the Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm pistol
Zimmerman used to kill unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, the Buckeye
Firearms Foundation announced that it is raising money to buy the former
neighborhood watch captain a new gun.

The Aspen Times reported Sunday that Scalia drew upon the Holocaust as an example of how judicial activism can lead to problems. According to the Utah Bar Association's website, Scalia was slated to be the keynote speaker for the 2013 Summer Convention event, which was held from July 17-20 in Snowmass, Colo.

Well, there is one person...totally fair comparison to this guy.
But please do go on Tony:

"We have become addicted to abstract moralizing," Scalia said last month. "I am questioning the sanity of having value-laden judgments made by judges."

The Texas statute [criminalizing sodomy] undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are "immoral and unacceptable," Bowers, supra, at 196-the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

A new study from Consumer Watchdog
says that Keystone XL pipeline will raise American gas prices 20 cents
to 40 cents in the Midwest with no long-term economic benefit to U.S.
economy.The report finds that:

. Drivers, especially in the Midwest, would pay
20 cents to 40 cents more at the pump if the disputed pipeline were
built, as the current discount of up to $30 a barrel for Canadian oil
disappears.. The true goal of multinational oil companies
and Canadian politicians backing the pipeline is to reach export outlets
outside the U.S. for tar sands oil and refined fuels, which would drive
up the oil’s price.. With U.S. oil production rising fast, any
“energy security” benefit for the U.S. would vanish as American oil
output exceeds that of Saudi Arabia in about 2020, according to the
International Energy Agency.

Cuccinelli consistently ignored the attacks until moderator Judy
Woodruff asked him directly about his previous comments. Cuccinelli
responded briefly, saying, “My personal beliefs about the personal
challenges of homosexuality haven’t changed.” He then said that as
governor he he would “create an environment” economically every
Virginian has opportunity.

A Norwegian woman sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai for having
sex outside marriage after she reported an alleged rape said Friday she
decided to speak out in hopes of drawing attention to the risks of
outsiders misunderstanding the Islamic-influenced legal codes in this
cosmopolitan city.

The case has drawn outrage from rights groups and others in the West
since the 24-year-old interior designer was sentenced Wednesday. It also
highlights the increasingly frequent tensions between the United Arab
Emirates' international atmosphere and its legal system, which is
strongly influenced by Islamic traditions in a nation where foreign
workers and visitors greatly outnumber locals.

Oh and there's not a question of whether she lied...her attacked received a prison sentence...of course it was SHORTER than hers.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Earlier this week, tea party activists and GOP lawmakers gathered near the Capitol to rail against an immigration reform bill passed by the Senate.

While the event was linked to a number of controversial figures, including an organizer
who has argued for eugenics and called African-Americans a "retrograde
species," that didn't deter Republicans like Rep. Steve King (Iowa) and
Sens. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) from showing up to join
the chorus against a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

When Ken Crow -- a co-founder of the Tea Party Community -- stepped up to the microphone, however, George Zornick of The Nation said he was taken aback by the talk of "breeding" and racial purity that followed.

So the usual cast of nutjob subjects were present. Not that they'll ever be asked about it.

Nearly a month after a decisive ruling from the Supreme Court declaring a key section of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, the Republican-led congressional committee that's been defending the law in court announced today that it is abandoning its support for DOMA and legislation like it around the country.

But hey, the law firm that handled the matter was paid $3 million in fees to support the notion of inequality under the law -- so good job John Boehner.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Thursday, July 18, 2013

If you like "Stand Your Ground" the law that encourages you to KILL people lest they live to testify against your claim that you felt endangered, you'll love the latest GOP demand to make you all safer.

This story is rather incredible, but it’s not without precedent.
Republicans in the US House Appropriations Committee yesterday voted
down an amendment that would have permitted the Justice Department to
block the sale of guns and explosives to suspected terrorists on the
terror watch list.

If we stop terrorists from buying explosives, then the terrorists win.

You see, Republicans say they don’t trust the terror watch list, and neither do their masters at the NRA. So rather than figure out how to improve the terror watch list, Republicans figure it’s better to just arm the terrorists.

Cuban pitcher Misael Siverio told a Spanish-language newspaper he has defected to the United States and is going to try to make it to the major leagues.
Siverio was part of the Cuban national team that traveled to Iowa for an exhibition game against a collegiate all-star team from the U.S. But he apparently left the delegation at some point after it arrived in Des Moines on Tuesday afternoon.

Compulsory education laws have resulted in parents disengaging themselves from the responsibility to oversee the education of their children and have caused schools to falter under the burden of being all things to all people.
Those points are among the arguments made by Sen. Aaron Osmond, R-South Jordan, in an article posted Friday on the blog of the Utah State Senate, in which Osmond called for the end of compulsory education in the state.

Violent crime in the United States fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2011 with murder, rape and robbery all going down, although crime remains a serious problem in many urban areas, the FBI said on Monday...

Compared with 2010, the new figures show violent crime down 3.8 percent overall. Property crime was down 0.5 percent.

At least two empiricalpapers have found that Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws like the one in Florida are associated with an average increase rather than a decrease in firearm homicides. This plausibly occurs because the deterrent effects of such laws are outweighed by the increase in the range of legal defenses for the use of lethal violence that become available to attackers. While SYG laws are meant to protect defenders, the absence of impartial witnesses makes it difficult in many cases to determine who ought to have had a “reasonable fear” of whom.

Oh those foreseeable conundrums that do not matter as much as the gun-lobby's money.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

He first got his column in 1976.
At the WaPo, lifetime tenure trumps even unvarnished racism and even
less varnished mediocrity. Can you imagine him being able to make it in
the blogosphere on his own merits? Me neither.

Although now that I think about it, with a few "heys" and "indeeds" Cohen would be the equal of Ernest T. Bass, Esq.

Hundreds of pages of email and text message correspondence made public
last week shed new light on the infighting and organizational disarray
that have plagued America’s leading conservative Christian political
consulting firm in recent months...

The series of emails and text messages, made public on the Franklin
County Court website in the ongoing lawsuit between Everhart and
Strategy Group, add further detail to that meeting, and show the extent
to which the company’s managers were worried about Elsass’ psychological
and spiritual health. They also reveal potentially embarrassing
anecdotes for the company, including one incident in which an executive
said Elsass accidentally mailed a “female pleasure machine” to Rep.
Michele Bachmann.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney will run
against Wyoming’s senior U.S. senator in next year’s Republican primary,
her campaign said Tuesday.

Cheney, 46, is the elder of Dick Cheney’s two daughters. Her
announcement is a political challenge unlike anything Wyoming has seen
for years, maybe decades — Republicans in the state rarely challenge
incumbents in national office. All three members of the state’s
congressional delegation and all statewide elected officials are
Republican.

Yet Cheney’s interest in the seat has been an open secret for
months. Last year, Cheney and her husband bought a home in the posh
northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole. She has been in the public
eye in recent years as a Fox News political commentator.

She’s also been speaking frequently at Republican Party events in the state.

US Sen. Mike Enzi also announced Tuesday he was planning to seek a
fourth term, making clear he was seeking re-election bid more than six
months earlier than he has in the past.

Not many people in Wyoming were anxious for Cheney to run (after all she doesn't really live there). But she has the "all important" Erick Erickson endorsement.

Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais, the anti-abortion Republican physician
accused of encouraging his wife and mistress to have multiple abortions,
raised just $39,000 in the second quarter, according to his most recent
report to the Federal Election Commission. It’s a paltry sum for an
incumbent member and signals more trouble for his re-election prospects
in 2014.

I'm sure everyone is asking the same question...how did this guy even get $39,000?

Maybe one of his fellow dumb, venal and hypocritical departing kleptomaniacs helped?

Javier Sanchez, a former senior legislative assistant to Rep. Michele
Bachmann, R-Minn., has been arrested in connection with a string of
thefts in the Rayburn House Office Building, Fox News has learned.

What a shock, huh? Michele Bachmann connected to a theft...oh, sorry I mean FoxNews learning something.

Javier Sanchez, a former senior legislative assistant to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has been arrested in connection with a string of thefts in the Rayburn House Office Building, Fox News has learned.

Twinkies are back, but they may be a bit smaller than you remember.
The new boxes hitting shelves this week list the spongy yellow cakes as having 270 calories and a weight of 77 grams for two cakes, or 135 calories and 38.5 grams for one cake.

That two traditional paragons of racial tolerance like Florida and the LAPD would not eventually find a link without Kevin Bacon involved?

Despite reporting to the contrary from both Los Angeles' NBC affiliate and the Los Angeles Police Department, Trayvon Martin protesters in Hollywood on Sunday night neither "stormed" nor caused "about $15,000 worth of damage" at a local hotel.
For the most part, protests in the wake of the "not guilty" verdict for George Zimmerman in Florida, have been peaceful here in L.A., though, at times, it seems as if NBC's local affiliate, NBC4 hoped they might not be.

Dear Media and especially FoxNews loyal and aging demographic...a protest is not per se a riot.

THE REPORTS OF the religious climate at the Air Force Academy are unsettling: A chaplain instructs cadets to try to convert classmates by warning that they "will burn in the fires of hell" if they do not accept Christ. During basic training, freshman cadets who decline to attend after-dinner chapel are marched back to their dormitories in "heathen flights" organized by upperclassmen. A Jewish student is taunted as a Christ killer and told that the Holocaust was the just punishment for that offense.

The death threats began again shortly after Lieutenant Adam Cohen, a combat systems engineer in the US air force, returned from Afghanistan in October 2011. The messages, littered with obscenities and urging him to take his own life, were linked, he believes, to an alleged rape he had not reported from years earlier.
But when Cohen, 29, reported the threats and the alleged sexual assault to his chain of command, he found himself under investigation.

This disturbing thing is that incidents like the above are considered parts of the "freedom" the military is always proclaimed unthinkingly of protecting as a political ritual.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Monday, July 15, 2013

If Trayvon Martin had been born white he would be alive today. That has been established beyond all reasonable doubt. If he had been white, he never would have been stalked by Zimmerman, there would have been no fight, no funeral, no trial, no verdict. It is the Zimmerman mindset that must be found guilty - far more than the man himself. It is a mindset that views black men and boys as nothing but a threat, good for nothing, up to no good no matter who they are or what they are doing. It is the Zimmerman mindset that has birthed a penal system unprecedented in world history, and relegated millions to a permanent undercaste.

Of the many outrages that manifested themselves in the Zimmerman verdict it would be hard to top the utter hypocrisy of this one:

Gov. Rick Perry would not say Sunday whether he personally thought George Zimmerman was guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, but refuted charges that the justice system is unfair to minorities, saying that "our justice system is colorblind."

In Texas, imposing the death penalty in capital cases comes down to one question: is the defendant going to be a "future danger" if he or she is not executed? Mr. Buck was sentenced to die based on testimony by Dr. Walter Quijano, who told jurors that Mr. Buck was more likely to pose a future danger to society because he is black. Dr. Quijano's testimony came in 1997, more than 20 years after Texas promised the Supreme Court that "no correlation exists between the race/ethnic background of a defendant and the probability that he will be either convicted of capital murder or given the death penalty."

But maybe we could not that was all before Rick Perry. But this is not -- Texas currently has 300 inmates on death row -- two-thirds are minorities, with African-Americans being the largest group on death row by far, though they make up just 12 percent of the population. Though whites are the most populous ethnic group they make up the smallest percentage of death row sentences, far less than one-third of death row.
But hey, Rick Perry is allowed to say his court system is color-blind. When has that guy ever been correct or fair either?
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

You know thank goodness we've progressed as a society to the point when you cannot get away with just killing a black teenager just because he's black, but through the magic of modern bigotry you can have a loophole to kill them because a black teenager walks around his neighborhood at night with candy.

So for all those right-wing assholes that talk about "technicalities" letting criminals off the hook -- shut the fuck up.

Marissa Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a
wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was
threatening her. Nobody got hurt, but this month a northeast Florida
judge was bound by state law to sentence her to 20 years in prison.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

In a shockingly racist move on Friday, San Francisco news station
KTVU misreported the names of the pilots aboard Asiana Flight 214, which
crashed at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and killed two
girls from China.

An anchor later apologized for the error and laid the blame on an NTSB official who purportedly confirmed the names before the piece went on air. A spokesperson for NTSB told ThinkProgress that they never released any names in this case.

It was later confirmed that an "intern" at the NTSB actually did list those names.

Uh, maybe professionals should work for the government, instead of "Sequester Specials"?

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday stood by its ruling that a dentist
acted legally when he fired an assistant because he found her too
attractive and worried he would try to start an affair.

Coming to the same conclusion as it did in December, the
all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats
to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in
flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings
do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated
by feelings, not gender.

Um...yeah.

So somebody cannot control their "feelings" ...so you must pay with either your job or being sexually harassed.

The Syfy telepic “Sharknado” caught fire in social media, particularly
after it began unspooling on the East Coast at 10 p.m. ET. The
hashtag-friendly title and utterly ridiculous premise — Los Angeles is
ravaged by a tornado of sharks — made it an irresistible target for
Twitter commentary for a host of prominent showrunners, producers,
actors and industry execs.

While the GOP and some Democrats too, try incessantly to snuff out reproductive rights, in Ireland where such rights have not existed there is some hope.

Despite threats of excommunication from cardinals and bishops, a privately devout Catholic prime minister is on the verge of introducing limited abortion into Ireland for the first time in the Republic's existence.
Enda Kenny and his coalition government are on course to push through the Protection of Life in Pregnancy bill [PDF] on Thursday evening, to allow for abortions when a woman's life is under threat if her pregnancy continues or if she is suicidal.

Of course, given recent events being threatened by the sanctity of the Irish Catholic Clergy is not exactly a threat with a high moral tone.
But for every step forward...

An Irish MP from the ruling Fine Gael party has apologised for pulling a female colleague on to his lap during the marathon debate on introducing limited abortion into the country.

The Washington, D.C., city council voted Wednesday afternoon to impose a $12.50 living wage on large retailers, passing a bill that Tuesday drew threats from Walmart that it would scrap plans to build three stores in the District that have not yet begun construction (three are already being built). Walmart had reportedly promised District officials that it would pay an average of $12.39 or more, so the fact that $12.50 was reason to pull out sheds more than a little doubt on the corporation's claims.

Naturally, Republicans in Congress are so protective of the Second Amendment (so powerful they never read the first clause) that the right to bear arms extends even to things that are not actually guns.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) introduced legislation this week to block
federal funding for schools that enforce rules that punish students for
playing with imaginary weapons.

Naturally, this is called the "Student Protection Act". A-yep.

Finally, the nation's most pressing issue is addressed.

Next up, Stockman introduces a law to mandate every child get a free pack of candy cigarettes.

In what appears to be a rather massive violation of the freedom of
religion, the Republican party in Indiana appears to have amended the
state criminal code to either make it a crime, or confirm that it remain
a crime, for clergy to conduct weddings for gay couples.

While it is not widely known, numerous mainstream American religions permit
gay nuptials. The faiths include reform Judaism, Evangelical Lutherans,
Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ, among others.

The amendment to the criminal code,
which will go into effect on July 1, 2014, makes it a misdemeanor,
punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine of $1,000 for clergy
“solemnize” a marriage of two men or two women.

In Texas, and so much of conservative social policy your job is simply to get born so you can get to work at a low-paying part-time job and be disqualified from any assistance.

Texas State Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R), the author of the radically anti-abortion bill
making its way through the Texas Legislature this week, argued for
hours on Tuesday that lawmakers should support her bill because of its
strong protections for a person's "pre-born life."

...

But back in 2007, she made the case against treating the unborn as
people -- at least, when it comes to qualifying for health care
services.

During a House debate on an appropriations bill that year,
Laubenberg, a staunch conservative, put forward an amendment that would
require expectant mothers to wait three months before they could begin
receiving prenatal and perinatal care under the Children's Health
Insurance Program, or CHIP, a program that helps cover uninsured
children in low-income families.

Before launching his daily round of votes to overturn "Obamacare" John Boehner decided to dip his cantaloupe-hued toes into foreign affairs.

As the Obama administration and other lawmakers -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- delicately navigate how to respond to last week's coup in Egypt, the Ohio Republican largely welcomed the military's overthrow of Morsi.
"I think their military on behalf of the citizens did what they had to do in terms of replacing the elected president," Boehner said during a short availability on Capitol Hill.

Egyptian soldiers and police clashed with Islamists protesting the military's ouster of the president in bloodshed that left at least 51 protesters and three members of the security forces dead, officials and witnesses said, and plunged the divided country deeper into crisis with calls by the Muslim Brotherhood's political party for all-out rebellion against the army.

And as an Ohioan I'm sure Boehner was all exited because it was more than a dozen-times more awesome than Kent State.

According to a new UN study, America is no longer the most obese country among more populous nations. That honor, which, according to another study, Americans held as recently as March, now belongs to Mexico.

The bad news, of course, is that this is all part of Mexico's plot to be more American. - Source Lou Dobbs.

Poor Canada is going to be sent into orbit like the small kid on the other end of the teeter-totter.

Just two days after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Robertson welcomed the
Rev. Jerry Falwell onto his show to discuss the cause of the tragedy.
Falwell's list of guilty parties included "the pagans and the
abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are
actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle," not to mention
the ACLU and People for the American Way for good measure. Robertson's
response to Falwell's venom? "I totally concur."

“For some reason now the Supreme Court has said homosexuality is now a
constitutional right and this homosexual marriage decision that was
handed down recently by the majority glorifies this activity and talks
about the civil rights and all this,” he continued. “Well, the Bible
didn’t talk about civil rights it talked about this was an offense
against God and it was an offense against the land and the land would
vomit you out.”

Yeah, the Bible also talks about slavery and not about suffrage -- I'm sure Pat would happily remedy that other oversight of ours ASAP.

Pat just keeps making money -- well, asking old people for theirs actually.

Monday, July 08, 2013

Prominent art collector Charles Saatchi said Sunday he is divorcing
his celebrity chef wife Nigella Lawson because she did not publicly
defend his reputation after images emerged of him grasping her throat in
a posh London restaurant.

Tabloid newspapers last month published photos of the incident, which
Saatchi described as a “playful tiff” during an intense debate about
the couple’s children.

The 70-year-old Saatchi was given a police “caution” after admitting assault.

So, when is Saatchi moving here to be a Republican candidate for Congress?

Syrian warplanes launched a series of strikes on the outskirts of Damascus Saturday as President Bashar al-Assad's regime pressed a bid to drive back rebels, a monitoring group said. Fresh fighting meanwhile erupted in several flashpoint areas around the capital, while the army renewed its shelling on besieged rebel areas of the central city of Homs, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Sunday, July 07, 2013

For the past two decades, there has been a rapid national shift away from identification with organized religion. And last year, according to the best available measurement of long-term trends in American religious identification, a new milestone was reached. More Americans between the ages of 18-30 now identify with no religion than identify as either Protestant or Catholic.

A young Dick Cheney began his first campaign for the House in this tiny village — population 1,600 — after the state’s sole Congressional seat finally opened up. But nowadays, his daughter Liz does not seem inclined to wait patiently for such an opening.
Ms. Cheney, 46, is showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers’ meetings, sometimes with her parents in tow. She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father.
But Ms. Cheney’s move threatens to start a civil war within the state’s Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family.

Saturday, July 06, 2013

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

They are picking up protesters on the seventh in Washington DC and driving for twenty four hours to get those protesters to Austin. They plan to be there until the fourteenth.
Presumably to show how much Texans like to invade the privacy of an unincorporated individual.
Needless to say we need to make sure everyone knows they are bringing in people from outside the state to bolster legislation the voters have protested against voiceferously.

Friday, July 05, 2013

Without question they were heroes, the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots. Like Smokejumpers in the Forest Service, the Hotshots routinely put themselves on the flank of a fire where no one else will go. If you live in the West, you know them as graduate students or mountain bikers — your neighbors who put on a yellow shirt and 40 pounds of gear to save the place you love.

But as to the question, the why of their deaths: every homeowner in the arid lands owes these fallen men an answer. More than ever, wild land firefighters die for people’s summer homes and year-round retreats. They die protecting property, kitchen views, dreams cast in stucco and timber.

And so it was in Yarnell, Ariz., on Sunday: the Hotshots were sent to the advance guard of a tricky fire in order to protect a former gold-mining community that had become a haven for retirees. After an evacuation order, most of the homes were empty. They were just fuel at that point.

Sunday’s fatal toll from the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona was the greatest loss of firefighter lives in the United States since Sept. 11. But those who died in New York that terrible day were not rushing into a building in order to protect property — they were trying to save lives.

I will thoroughly enjoy watching other GOP candidates have to kiss his ass. That'll help.

An extensive article on Ted Nugent written by the Washington Post’s Steve Hendrix reveals the Motor City Madman is seriously considering a run for the White House in 2016.
The article, which explores Nugent’s political influence, quotes him as saying he’s thinking about a presidential run and even throws out a possible slogan:
“Hi, I’m Ted Nugent. I have nine children from seven women, and I’m running for president.”

It says a lot about the Post that while they say people should stop reporting about Snowden and the NSA they write pieces about Ted Nugent.

For years the particular offensive aspects of American and French foreign policy have been making imperialistic errors and pretending there were still imperialistic errors to make respectively (oh, and the abuse of Greenpeace).

But while France may have disagreed with much of the Bush Era foreign policy era decisions, it was apparently in full "agreeance" with the American method of invading privacy.

France's foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.
The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.
The operation is "outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision", Le Monde says.

Well, a major French newspaper at least disagrees with the program, that gives it one up on the American media.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Jaxine Bubis, one of the Colorado Republicans looking to face off
against state Senate President John Morse (D) this fall, wrote an erotic
novel published in 2004 under a pseudonym, according to The Denver Post.

In a statement to the Post sent Thursday, Bubis acknowledged writing a
novel called "Beantown Heat," published by eXtasy Books, under the pen
name Jaxine Daniels.

ExaroNews a British investigative web site, has just published the full transcript of a secretly recorded meeting between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the staff of The Sun, a U.K. tabloid owned by News Corp., in which Murdoch admitted that he was aware for decades that journalists from his newspapers had been bribing both police and public officials.

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

On Sunday, June 30th at around 11:45 PM, I was riding home on the
Queens-bound F train following a day of LGBT Pride festivities. Two men
were loudly making homophobic comments, such as "Today was a scary day
for me. There were fags everywhere." When a group of queer youth got on
the train, the men proceeded to harass them, stating that the teens made
them want to puke and that they would be killed if they were in Iran.
The first assailant then threatened to rape them, at which point I took
out my phone to document the incident.

Ah yes, the classic trope..."I dislike gays so much I will have sex with them!" Good job of being stereotypical jackass.

Unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro
hit another all-time high in May, official data showed Monday.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said the eurozone's
unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point in May to 12.1 percent.
April's unemployment rate was initially estimated to be 12.2 percent,
but it was revised down to 12.0 percent thanks to new data, particularly
from France.

The figures will make sobering reading for the region's politicians
as they gather in Berlin this week to tackle the problem of youth
unemployment — nearly one in four people aged under-25 are out of work —
and the damage it is doing to the eurozone's economy and social fabric.

According to TMZ, your source for all things porn-and-food-related, the folks at Pure Mature have offered Deen a six figure deal just to appear in one of their niche videos.

In the letter, PM starts by explaining to Paula she’s a MILF — a hot mom over the age of 65 who men would like to (you know). It continues with the job offer adding, “Full figured or thin, arthritic or diabetic — you embody our perfect spokesperson.”
As for compensation, PureMature says it’s willing to offer her “6 figures for very little work”

An Omaha firefighter was shot Monday afternoon after a woman being transported in an ambulance pulled out a gun.
The incident began just after 3 p.m. when paramedics were called to the area of 48th and L Streets on a report of a woman having a seizure. They put her in an ambulance and headed for a hospital.
While en route, near 42nd and Center Streets, she pulled out a gun, according to police.
The firefighter, who has not been identified but is in his mid-30s, grabbed for the weapon and it discharged. He radioed a “help a firefighter” message, and officers responded.

With the recent Supreme Court decisions striking down DOMA and effectively ending California's Proposition 8, the usual aspiring arbiter's of morality have come forth as usual, in particular Cardinal Dolan of New York.
In protesting the Supreme Court's decision and arguing against legal recognition of same-sex marriage Dolan concludes:

These days, the vocation of a man and woman, united forever in faithful love, leading to babies and families, is as potent a sign as celibacy is for priests!
Besides, “the truth shall set us free!” That always gives us encouragement, and trumps worry and sadness, right?

Files released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday revealed that in 2007, the diocese’s archbishop at the time, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund in order to protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation.
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has in the past emphatically denied seeking to shield church funds as archbishop of Milwaukee, and he reiterated in a statement on Monday that these were “old and discredited attacks.”
However, the files released Monday contain a letter he wrote to the Vatican in 2007, in which he explained that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

Something for Steve Douchebag and the other smug asses at Fox & Friends to consider the next time a snowstorm hits and they mockingly ask "what global warming?"

Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest
northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite
fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S.
for at least 30 years.

And yes, the relationship between this particular incident and global climate change is tenuous at best...making it still more of a piece of evidence than a nasty blizzard (which is actually some evidence of global climate change too).

Asked whether he believes Boehner should break the Hastert Rule to push immigration reform, McCain demurred.
"I really hesitate to tell Speaker Boehner how he should do this," he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Oh there's that straight talk.
See you next Sunday, faithful old crank.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]